Pod Insights Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries 116. She Said She Was a Social Worker. Then Children Started Disappearing. About this episode For 20 years in Tennessee, a mysterious woman appeared on the doorsteps of single mothers, claiming to be a social worker. She would then disappear with their children.
TW: Kidnapping
Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/tennesseekidnappings
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:02 Kaelyn Moore? In 1943, an 18-year-old girl named Mary Reed came to in a Memphis, Tennessee hospital. She had just given birth. And she was still groggy as a nurse handed her a small blue blanket. Inside was her son, Steve. Mary had done something scandalous, at least by the standards of the 1940s. She had given birth outside of wedlock to a child whose father would not be present. And she could tell from the judgmental looks of the nurses as they left the room to take her son to the nursery, that her decision to give birth and to keep him was going to make their lives difficult. Just then, there was a knock. A small, older woman with a sweet smile stood in the doorway and introduced herself as a social worker.
1:46 Kaelyn Moore? Mary was still a little out of it as the woman approached her bed with some papers. She told Mary that she just had some routine paperwork for the new mother to sign. But when Mary tried to read it over, the words were all fuzzy. The sedation hadn't quite worn off, and she struggled to even keep her head up long enough to read each page. She was desperate to be able to put her head back down on her pillow, so she took the social worker's pen, signed her name, and handed the paperwork back to the woman, who gave her a sweet smile and walked out the door. And then, everything went black.
2:22 Kaelyn Moore? Mary awoke just a little while later with a much clearer mind. She was able to sit up on her own and speak with the nurse who came in to help her. "She was ready to see her son," she told the nurse. But the nurse gave her a weird look. "What do you mean?" she asked Mary. "My son, Steve," she said, "I would like to hold him, please." The nurse looked at her like she just said she was an alien with confusion and skepticism. So the young mother bolted up out of the bed and walked down to the nursery. Behind the glass window, there were babies in blankets being watched over. But Steve was noticeably absent. She turned to a nurse and asked her where he was, but she was met with another confused look.
3:06 Kaelyn Moore? Baby Steve wasn't in the hospital. It was like he had vanished into thin air.
3:13 Kaelyn Moore? Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kayla Moore. We are going to take a dark journey today to Tennessee in the 30s and 40s. A seldom talked about time when hundreds of children went missing. A time when a mysterious social worker arrived on the doorsteps of poor mothers and disappeared with their children. Now, I just want to preface this by saying this episode is dark. I was even getting emotional just reading over the case file and research here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters. This case involves missing children, but it is an incredibly important part of American history.
3:53 Kaelyn Moore? One where the fallout is still affecting thousands of people to this day, so I hope you stay with me. And before we jump in, I actually want to tell you about a new show I'm starting called Clues. It's a new true crime show hosted by myself and Morgan Apsher, who you may actually know from the Two Hot Takes podcast. I have to say, it's been really fun getting to know Morgan and diving into some of these cases. There's a little bit of true crime, a little bit of mystery. So make sure you check it out wherever you get your podcasts, starting on April 23rd. And we are dropping every week on Wednesdays. Our first episode, we're going to talk about a case many of you probably know. It's the case of Lacey Peterson.
4:33 Kaelyn Moore? We're going to look at some of the clues that led to the breaks in the case and also talk about our own theories. So please go drop a hello in the comments on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen. I would love to hear from you. Okay, this is a big one. It's an important one. It's a very eerie one, and I want to get back into it.
4:55 Kaelyn Moore? Mary was confused and devastated after she realized her son wasn't in the hospital nursery. But no one there seemed to know or care about what happened to her baby. The hospital staff felt like it wasn't really their problem. As an unmarried mother, they viewed Mary as pathetic at best, and at worst, a contemptible, immoral drag on society. No one wanted to help her. Mary was on her own. But Mary was smart. She knew that her son's disappearance had to have something to do with that paperwork she signed. At the time, she wasn't aware of it. But while she was still under the influence of heavy drugs, Mary had actually signed to terminate her parental rights
5:38 Kaelyn Moore? and made her son technically a ward of the state. Her parental rights termination paperwork came from a place called the Tennessee Children's Home Society, a state agency responsible for child welfare. That's probably where the social worker worked. Maybe this was a huge misunderstanding, she hoped. She ended up going to the organization's headquarters in Midtown Memphis. And there, she found this massive, three-story mansion with pillars framing a large porch and an intricate terracotta roof. It was in a residential neighborhood in a really nice part of town, a lot nicer than where Mary lived on her own. That day, she wore her best dress and shoes.
6:22 Kaelyn Moore? She knew that if she was going to get anywhere, that if people were going to take her seriously, she needed to make a good impression. Being a poor, single mother was really not going to help her case. Inside the building, there were fireplaces at either end, flanked by sofas and chairs where a few other people, mostly well-dressed couples, were sitting. The whole place was styled in pastel blue and pink. A beaded lamp by the window cast a kaleidoscopic array of sparkling light onto the floors and wall. It was supposed to be warm and inviting. For Mary, this was one of the worst days of her life. "It's fine," she reassured herself.
7:05 Kaelyn Moore? "This was a mistake. They must have thought I was someone else when they had me sign the paperwork. "I just need to explain what's happening." But as Mary was sitting there, she made eye contact with another single woman in an outdated dress. She too had this panicked look on her face, and the employees were also ignoring her every time she tried to catch their attention. Mary couldn't help but notice how similar they looked, how out of place they both seemed inside of this otherwise inviting and luxurious building. We don't know this particular woman's name, but we have a pretty good idea of her story. Let's call her Teresa.
7:48 Kaelyn Moore? Like Mary, this woman would also have been a new mother, and like Mary, she would have come to this building to search for her child.
7:59 Kaelyn Moore? Teresa had recently brought her new baby home to an empty house. It was just the two of them. The child's father was an older man who was married and had other children. He had told Teresa he was going to leave his family for her and the baby, but he never did, and he stopped returning her phone calls once the baby was born. So Teresa was learning to be a parent all on her own. She was trying to hold, soothe, feed, burp, and change this tiny, demanding infant. The crying was relentless. She never knew what the baby wanted, and her body still hurt from just giving birth. She also hadn't slept in weeks, and on top of that,
8:40 Kaelyn Moore? she had no idea how she was going to afford this child without help from the father. She had to pay for the laundry, for food, for electricity, water, rent. But how could she ever return to work? She was truly fighting for her life, as is.
8:59 Kaelyn Moore? At some point through this haze of fatigue and piercing infant screams, there was a knock at the door. For Teresa, it was probably frightening. She couldn't really imagine who it would be, except her landlord looking for the rent. She slowly opened the door and was surprised when she found a smartly dressed, gray-haired woman on the doorstep. The woman didn't seem annoyed by the sound of the angry baby inside, or disgusted by Teresa's haggard appearance. Instead, she smiled reassuringly. The woman introduced herself as a social worker. She said it was her job to help out women just like Teresa. She understood how difficult this situation was.
9:44 Kaelyn Moore? No one should have to recover from birth and look after a newborn all on their own. It was too much for one person. Teresa deserved a chance to rest. The woman said that the city actually offered services for women in this position, and she could take the baby just for a few days while the new mother got back on her feet, free of charge, of course. To Teresa, this woman was like an angel from heaven. She could have cried from relief and gratitude. She quickly signed the paperwork that the woman presented her, too tired to read the fine print, and she gathered her baby's things. She was asleep before the woman's car, a sleek, black limousine,
10:28 Kaelyn Moore? pulled away from the curb with her baby inside of it.
10:32 Kaelyn Moore? Over the next few days, Teresa began to feel a little bit more like herself. After some rest and time to process her new life, she found herself excited about the future, and she missed her baby. But the woman didn't leave a phone number for her to call. Actually, come to think of it, Teresa never got the woman's name or where she worked. She closed her eyes and tried to draw up an image of the paperwork she had signed. And she remembered seeing a name towards the bottom of one of the pages, the Tennessee Children's Home Society. She opened up her phone book and got the address. Then she baked a fresh loaf of bread to thank the social worker and put on her best dress to go get her baby.
11:17 Kaelyn Moore? But when she arrived, a woman at the front desk told her the same thing she would go on to tell Mary. She had no idea what she was talking about. There was no service offered by the city to help poor, single mothers. Both Mary and Teresa were told that they couldn't be helped, that their children were not inside and that they needed to leave the Tennessee Children's Home Society. After all, they were both poor, single mothers. What kind of life could they have given those children anyways? As the two women walked down the steps of the mansion in complete shock from what had just happened, they saw another woman wearing scuffed work boots under a tattered old dress,
12:01 Kaelyn Moore? heading inside all alone. She had dark circles under her eyes as if she had been up for days. They suspected they knew exactly why she was there and what was about to happen to her. How many other women in Memphis had lost their children?
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13:47 Kaelyn Moore? But that's when Nelda saw a long, black limousine turn onto her street. There had never been a limo in this neighborhood, so the kids ogled at it for a moment. Then, it parked right in front of their home. The driver's side door popped open, and out walked a short stout woman with neatly cropped gray hair. She approached the children who are watching with their mouths open. "Hi, children. Do you want to go for a ride?" she asked. Of course they did. Nelda helped round up the siblings and got them all into the vehicle. "Wow, a real limousine. She felt like Katharine Hepburn." She couldn't wait to tell her mother about this later.
14:31 Kaelyn Moore? Nelda turned around and watched as her home faded from view as the car drove off. That would be the last time that she ever saw that house. Nelda didn't know it, but earlier that day, her mother had signed a piece of paper that was put in front of her face at a hospital. She had a quick stay there while she was healing from the wounds of a domestic dispute. And while she was there, a woman claiming to be a social worker came into her room and approached her, saying that she had a way to help her children. She said that if the woman just signed some papers, the children could be placed into foster care with the Tennessee Children's Home Society
15:14 Kaelyn Moore? for just a few days until she was well. And just like all of the other mothers, she signed the paperwork without giving it a second thought. The social worker seemed so nice, and the mother was so desperate for her children to have a place to stay while she couldn't take care of them. But when she was healed, she went to the Tennessee Children's Home Society headquarters, and again, just like all of those other women, she was told by a receptionist that they had no idea what the mother was talking about. Her children were not there, and eventually, she was asked to leave.
15:52 Kaelyn Moore? But what was she going to do? There was no legal recourse for her to take. She was a poor mother with an abusive partner in the 40s. No cop was going to look kindly on a woman like that. "You shouldn't even have five children under your care in the first place," they would tell her. "Look what happens when women like you have children. They go missing," they would say.
16:15 Kaelyn Moore? With no other option, she stood outside of the TCHS building for days, her nose pressed to the fence surrounding the building, hoping to catch just a glimpse of one of her children. She could see that there were kids in the building through the second-story windows, and she wondered if any of them were there under similar circumstances. One day, while she was waiting by the fence, she saw her middle daughter walking outside of the building with one of the women who worked there. She started banging on the fence and screaming. "Open the gate, open the gate, there's been a mistake." She was so close to her daughter. If only she could get in, she could just go grab her. But no one came to let her in,
16:59 Kaelyn Moore? and the fence was too high for her to climb. Instead, the receptionist led her daughter back into the building. That was the last time she ever saw any of her children. The next time she came to the building, they were gone. It was becoming clear that someone was preying on vulnerable mothers in Tennessee. Now, it's never been easy to be a single mother. Historically, it was considered immoral and offensive. Communities shunned single moms, but they still expected them to somehow survive on their own. Many states, including Tennessee, passed laws in the 18th century forcing single mothers to raise their children or face jail time.
17:44 Kaelyn Moore? Things were a little bit better in the 30s and 40s, but single mothers still carried the same stigma of indecency. Their families often hid them away from their communities in so-called, quote, "maternity homes," where they waited out their pregnancies and had their births in secret. And sometimes they would hope to pass their babies off as another relatives, or perhaps even a sibling. Either that, or their child would just have a special category on their birth certificate that read "illegitimate." But that is what was so confusing about what was happening to these poor mothers. That's what Mary and Teresa and so many other women like them couldn't understand.
18:26 Kaelyn Moore? Their kids were basically rubber stamped as undesirable at birth. So why was someone taking them? Well, while a few women ran into each other in the lobby of the TCHS building, the epicenter for all of these strange disappearances, in general, they weren't really talking to each other, and they didn't realize how big of a widespread problem this had become. But some women around Tennessee were starting to piece together, maybe, why their specific children were being targeted. Like in the case of Alma Sipple. Alma was exhausted. Her 10-month-old baby, Irma, had not slept very well over the past several days.
19:11 Kaelyn Moore? She had a really bad cold, and it just kept getting worse. But Alma didn't have enough money to bring Irma to a doctor, so all she could really do was worry. Even when a cough or a sniffle didn't wake her baby, it still startled Alma out of bed to go check on her. The next day, when baby Irma was finally napping, and Alma was trying to get some shut-eye herself, there was a sharp knock at the door that startled both of them awake. "That's strange," Alma thought. She wasn't expecting anyone. Annoyed, she scooped up the fussy baby and opened the door. Squinting into the light, there was a woman she didn't recognize on the doorstep.
19:52 Kaelyn Moore? The woman smiled at Alma, gray-haired and conservatively dressed. She told Alma she was a social worker who was there to help her sick child. Behind her, parked down the street, was a long, raven, black limousine. The stranger asked if she could come in and look the baby over, free of charge, of course. Alma was honestly grateful to have another set of eyes on Irma, so she welcomed the woman straight in. The woman instructed Alma to lay the baby down so she could examine her. But here's the thing: she didn't look into the baby's nose, or throat, or even listen to her breathing. Instead, she felt the texture of Irma's blond, straight hair.
20:35 Kaelyn Moore? She checked the color of her eyes, a cool, icy blue. Alma couldn't help but feel like the woman was inspecting how her baby looked, rather than what could be making the baby sick. And after that odd exam, she declared Irma dangerously ill, and said she needed to be taken to a hospital immediately. Alma was taken aback by this. Yes, she had been concerned about the baby, but she hadn't felt like her life was at risk. She admitted to the social worker that she didn't have any money to pay for a doctor, and the old woman understood. She said she was willing to do Alma a special favor.
21:15 Kaelyn Moore? She said she could forge some paperwork in order to identify Irma as her ward, and that way, the state would pay for her care. All of this would happen free of charge. But that meant that Alma couldn't come with them. If the hospital found out that Irma had a different parental figure, they would hit Alma with a huge bill. And they could also both get in trouble for fudging the paperwork. So the social worker said she could bring the baby to the hospital, get her the treatment she needed, and then Alma could pick her up in a few days. Alma was hesitant to give up her baby, but Irma cried and coughed in the social worker's arms, and she didn't seem to be getting any better.
21:58 Kaelyn Moore? The thought crossed Alma's mind, that what if she gave up this chance to get her baby to a doctor when she really needed it? The social worker pressed Alma. She knew how hard it could be to accept help. But she needed to do what was best for her child. Alma couldn't really argue with that, so she signed the paperwork the social worker needed to pass Irma off as her ward. She got Irma bundled and gave her a kiss. She promised the baby that she'd feel better soon, and then she'd see mama again later. The next couple of days were tortuous. Alma had never really been away from her baby before, and she couldn't stop thinking about what was happening to her at the hospital.
22:41 Kaelyn Moore? She must be so afraid without her mama. On the day Alma was scheduled to pick her up, she arrived outside an impressive mansion at daybreak. The front door was still locked. In the quiet of the early morning, Alma could hear babies crying inside the building. And one of them sounded exactly like her own child. She knocked urgently. A woman in a nurse's uniform opened the door. She didn't seem to know who Alma was, or care, really. She told her to wait outside. Alma paced between the pillars lining the porch. Finally, another woman came outside and introduced herself as another social worker.
23:24 Kaelyn Moore? Alma just wanted to know where her baby was. The social worker told her that she had some bad news. Irma had taken a turn for the worse, and she passed away at the hospital. For a moment, Alma felt completely numb. The news was shocking. But then, she heard the babies crying from upstairs again. And she swore one of them sounded just like Irma. She knew that cry. She had listened to it every night. There was no way her daughter died from a cold in just two days at a hospital. There was just no way. Alma demanded to speak to the woman who brought Irma to the hospital, the stout gray-haired woman.
24:07 Kaelyn Moore? She needed to speak to the doctors who treated her as well. She demanded to see the records. But the social worker slammed the door in her face. Alma waited a few minutes, but now she wasn't feeling so patient. She banged on the door over and over, but no one answered. Instead, a man came up to the porch and he told her to leave. Alma told him she was just there to get her baby and she would be gone. But he didn't care. He took her arm and he forced her down the steps and warned her to never come back. But Alma didn't listen. She didn't believe that Irma was dead and she wouldn't believe it until she got some proof.
24:50 Kaelyn Moore? She didn't know why, but for some reason, that woman with the gray hair wanted Irma and Alma was not about to just let her have her baby. She returned to the mansion again and again, each time insisting on some sort of information about Irma. Eventually, the staff grew so familiar with her, they stopped her from entering the building as soon as they saw her. And every time she was forced out of that mansion, Alma would hear the babies crying upstairs and she would swear that one of those voices belonged to her daughter. She kept thinking about the strange social worker that showed up to her house to inspect her baby, how she didn't really care about how sick her child was.
25:33 Kaelyn Moore? Instead, she just seemed to care about how her child looked. And Alma wondered if that could possibly hold a clue as to why her baby was taken from her. She didn't know it, but across town, another woman, Grace Gribble, got another clue as to why this might be happening to their children. Grace was a widow and a mother of six children, aged three to 10. She kept her head above water however she could, and that included accepting government assistance. The family had regular in-home visits from a social worker named Sarah Sems. Sarah worked for an organization called the Memphis Family Welfare Agency and she helped
26:17 Kaelyn Moore? Grace access many benefits that the family might qualify for. On one particular day, Sarah arrived with another woman named Helen. Grace assumed that this was just another member of the Memphis Family Welfare Agency, and so she welcomed both of the women into her home. This time, Sarah presented Grace with paperwork she said would help her children access healthcare. Grace gratefully signed everything. I mean, why shouldn't she? She trusted Sarah. Sarah had been coming to her home and working with her family for years. But then, instead of the usual chat about how the family was holding up, how the kids were doing, Sarah and Helen put away the paperwork and stood up.
27:01 Kaelyn Moore? They announced that they would be taking the three youngest children now. What? Grace didn't understand what that meant. But Sarah and Helen didn't explain. Instead, they walked down the hall towards the children's room. They proceeded to round up Cricket, who was three, Kirby, who was five, and Doris Ann, who was six, and they herded them towards the front door. The children looked to their mother for an explanation. Grace wanted one herself. What the hell was happening? She ran to the door and blocked the exit. Someone needs to tell me what's going on here. But Sarah kept a firm grip on the kids' arms, and she explained that it was all right there in the paperwork Grace had just signed.
27:46 Kaelyn Moore? If Grace had bothered to read it first, she wouldn't have so many questions. The children had full healthcare coverage now because they were wards of the state. When Grace signed, she relinquished all of her parental rights. Absolute dread spread through Grace's veins like ice. She felt faint. The children were upset now, screaming, crying, and thrashing as they tried to get loose. Grace was in tears too. She tried protesting. She tried to take it back. But Helen and Sarah simply hauled the children out of the door. Grace followed them outside, where she saw a large, black limousine waiting. There, a gray-haired woman was holding the back door open.
28:31 Kaelyn Moore? Grace tried to pry her frantic children away, but she couldn't overpower the three other adults. They manhandled the screaming children into the car and slammed the door. And Grace could still hear them crying and pounding on the windows. Helen stared into the car at Kirby, studying him like she was a judge in a dog show. She confirmed with Sarah, "He's four, right?" And when Sarah replied, "Yes," Helen nodded, satisfied. She said, "Good. We have an order for a boy of this age and type."
29:07 Kaelyn Moore? That statement stopped Grace right in her tracks. Now she knew what this was and exactly what to do next. Grace hastily got dressed and rushed over to the juvenile court. She was sure she would see one of the women there processing her children's paperwork. She scanned every face in the courthouse until she spotted the one she was looking for, the stout, gray-haired woman in the conservative long dress. Grace ran up to her and grabbed the woman roughly, demanding, "Where are my children?" The woman responded calmly, like she was used to this kind of confrontation. And all she said was, "You should thank me." Grace was hysterical. She pleaded for her children.
29:52 Kaelyn Moore? This was all a mistake. It must be a misunderstanding. The old woman simply untangled herself from Grace and advised her to just forget them.
30:04 Kaelyn Moore? Every one of those parents did everything they could to get their children back. Mary Reed spent months and probably more money than she could afford searching for a lawyer that would take her case. Her best shot was a habeas corpus lawsuit, which is usually used to challenge unlawful imprisonment by law enforcement. In this case, Mary's lawyer hoped that it could be used to expose the illegitimate methods the Tennessee Children's Home Society was using to take custody of children. If they could prove that Mary never authorized the state to take her baby, they could leverage his release. But when Mary's doctor took the stand to testify, he didn't back up Mary's story that she had been too addled by the anesthetics in
30:48 Kaelyn Moore? the hospital to understand what she was signing. Instead, he claimed that Mary was given a full explanation of the paperwork and that the drugs administered during labor couldn't affect her judgment. And as he said it, he looked to the back of the courtroom directly at the stout gray-haired woman. And when he did, she gave him a smile. Mary ended up losing that case. She still had no information about her son's well-being or his whereabouts. Then there was Alma Sipple, who couldn't get back into the mansion, so she tried going to the police to report a kidnapping. But it was a tricky situation. Alma had willingly given Irma to the social worker.
31:32 Kaelyn Moore? And it had been with the intention of defrauding the state because they were going to be forging paperwork. So it was really easy for the police to brush her off and threaten her with prosecution. So Alma tried another angle, the hospitals. She approached administrators, nurses, basically anyone who would listen to her to try to get access to any records about Irma's supposed treatment. But it was hard to get anyone to pay attention. And when they did, they never found anything, or at least that's what they told her. When hope wore really thin, Alma walked through the cemeteries, looking for gravestones that might match her daughter's age.
32:14 Kaelyn Moore? Maybe the social workers were actually telling the truth and Irma did pass away. But if that's what really happened, why couldn't they show her any proof? Why didn't they have any paperwork for it? And why couldn't she find her daughter's headstone anywhere, no matter how many cemeteries she walked through? Alma's gut was stubborn. Something else was going on here.
32:38 Kaelyn Moore? Grace Gribbles Fight For Her Kids Ended Up Getting More Answers, But She Did Not Like What She Found. Like Mary, Grace had to search for months before she could find a lawyer willing to take her case to court. Her attorney laid out a solid argument that the paperwork Grace signed was invalid because it was presented to her under false pretenses. But instead of focusing on that very valid legal argument, the judge chose to focus on something else: the lifestyle Grace provided for her children. It wasn't anything fancy, but Grace owned her home and had the means to adequately care for her kids. Presumably, all of that was well documented in Sarah's frequent home visits.
33:22 Kaelyn Moore? And all of that material stuff aside, Grace loved her children fiercely. She would figure out how to provide for them. But in the judge's opinion, what a single mother could offer could not measure up to the lives her children now had with their new adoptive families. The judge hit his gavel. And as he did, Grace caught a glimpse of the gray-haired woman standing in the back of the courthouse with a big smile across her face.
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35:14 Speaker 04 Cool. Enjoy.
35:16 Speaker 05 It's Keenan Thompson. Buy your car online on Autotrader. Really.
35:25 Kaelyn Moore? See, when Sarah and Helen hauled off Grace's children, Cricket, Kirby, and Doris Ann months ago, it was so they could be placed with other parents, anxious to adopt. Grace learned that Doris Ann, age 6, now lived in Orlando, Florida with a newspaper publisher and his wife. They brought Doris Ann into their family because they were looking for a friend for their biological daughter. Cricket, age 3, was still in Memphis, living with a doctor and his wife. And Kirby, age 4, was now in Arkansas with a couple that had put in a special order for a blond-haired, blue-eyed, 4-year-old boy, just like Kirby. The judge ultimately ruled that Grace's children should stay in their new homes.
36:11 Kaelyn Moore? The judge attempted to comfort Grace in his ruling by writing, quote, "This is one of the sad tragedies of life that even a mother must endure for the best interests of her children." This had been happening to poor, single mothers all over Tennessee for 20 years. But no one knew the extent, or why it was happening. Some women never even knew what happened to their children after they disappeared, and no one believed them when they told them about the social worker. That is, until 1950, when people all over Memphis opened their newspapers and read the headline, quote, "Money Racket in Adoption of Babies." And there, on the front page of the newspaper,
36:56 Kaelyn Moore? was a picture of the boogeyman women had been warning each other about, the gray-haired social worker. She finally had a name: Georgia Tan.
37:07 Kaelyn Moore? What these women would all eventually learn, now that the truth was finally coming out, was that their children, all blond-haired, blue-eyed and white, were sold to high-paying families, sometimes for as much as $200,000 in today's money. And all of it was being organized by Georgia Tan.
37:28 Kaelyn Moore? Tan was actually a well-known figure in Memphis. She was the de facto head of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, the state-funded agency dedicated to the care and adoption of orphaned or abandoned children. Supporters and friends knew her as a selfless champion of her words. But those who didn't like Georgia, or who even feared her, described her as domineering, tyrannical, pompous, self-important. Some even compared her to Hitler, saying that she terrorized everyone. Tan believed that it was her responsibility to place children, any and all children, into the most ideal home possible. To her, that meant a wealthy, white household with two heterosexual parents.
38:13 Kaelyn Moore? She thought that poor children, and especially the children of single mothers, were destined to become worthless drains on society, just like their parents. By changing their circumstances, she thought she was not only improving the child, but improving society as a whole. And of course, the whole thing was illegal, and it was destroying loving families. But none of that really mattered to her. She was able to arrange unauthorized adoptions with impunity for over two decades. During that time, the parents of the children swept up in Georgia Tan's net were virtually powerless. Most of them had some sense of what happened to their children, that Tan was probably involved, but there was nothing that they could do to stop her.
38:57 Kaelyn Moore? It wouldn't be until after her death that this would all start coming to light. And the effects of this would shatter families across the country. Because in Philadelphia, a young girl named Nelda remembered being loaded into a black limousine one day. She remembered being put on a train by Georgia Tann and ending up with a family in another state, her siblings nowhere to be found. But over time, children like Nelda would start to have options. Adoption paperwork would start becoming unsealed in Tennessee. And every year, genealogical DNA services like 23andMe would get better and would start
39:39 Kaelyn Moore? connecting more and more siblings and parents and other family members. And these families would slowly start piecing themselves back together. But how did Georgia get away with this for so long? Well, join me here next week because we are going to do a deep dive into who Georgia was, how she got all of the cops, judges, and hospital staff to work for her baby trafficking scheme, and also how the families she pulled apart tried to find each other. You're definitely not going to want to miss it. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Hannah McIntosh.
40:23 Kaelyn Moore? Sound design and mix by Petri Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Journingan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. I will see you here next week. And until then, stay curious. Ooh. Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven-day trial.
41:07 Kaelyn Moore? Link in the bio or go to patreon.com/hartstarts pounding. But whatever you do, stay curious.
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